Innovation Thinking and Resources - Exploring Dynamics Within Innovation Landscapes

The Orchestrator needs to orchestrate your innovation capabilities.

By @paul4innovating June 13, 2016Capabilities and Capacities, Dynamic capabilities, Exploratory Walks & Needs

To deliver innovation, sustaining innovation, it needs to be built on dynamic skills, then you have to learn how you can orchestrate the capabilities you have, with those you have to bring in.

Building on those that give the necessary dynamic result you are looking for; to purposefully build what is needed to deliver the required result.

I have reconfigured my thinking around what will influence the evolution leading from building ‘just’ internal innovation capabilities to a whole ‘network effect’ from these.

This work just gets more exciting as it evolves.

It relies on how you purposefully build and construct these capabilities and competencies. The orchestration is fundamentally dynamic, full of uncertainties but the need is still to connect the parts to deliver the right result. We need to orchestrate, to build and then conduct and deliver the right results, to the innovation goals we seek.

Applying innovation thinking in different horizons

By @paul4innovating June 11, 2016Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, Fresh thinking, Molecules, Shifting dynamics in innovation3 Comments

In the past few days, I have had some exchanges on twitter with Jairo H Venegas and Ralph-Christian Ohr on different thinking around the three horizon methodology. We share similar views on its value and partly how it can be applied.

Ralph and I exchange constantly and occasionally meet up together. Actually, we need another meeting Ralph to catch up and explore these mutual innovation value points.

Ralph in a reply to Jairo suggested this: “That’s why a portfolio approach is so important” – with his take here: bit.ly/1Rn5Svq under his excellent Model for Integrative Innovation article.He ‘talks’ of cornerstones and offers different premises to anchor these a little more.

The dynamic points of innovation understanding

By @paul4innovating June 8, 2016Capabilities and Capacities, Dynamic capabilities, Exploratory Walks & Needs, Fitness Landscaping Regimes, Outcomes & Expectancies

Have you ever studied a map in a hilly or mountainous terrain? When you are studying the terrain, you have to survey the landscape and then decide how to cross. You need to be aware of what to avoid and what will help you map out a successful pathway. You need to optimize, evaluate and determine your best options.

Determining future innovation outcomes requires a greater understanding of what capabilities are more useful to develop, those that offer a more dynamic capacity. Do you know yours?

Can you separate these from the many you have that fail to give innovation impact?

We never start from a blank innovation canvas.

None of us has a ‘blank’ innovation canvas, we have developed a present position; one that is built on a legacy of past work and from our needs built up from our innovation activity, also in the past. As these develop we make choices, we sometimes become locked into certain structures, systems and processes, so we find it often highly difficult on how we are going to change, to move from one position to a different one – traversing the landscape to achieve better solutions to meet different goals that meet the present or future needs.

Coaching helps overcome the ten innovation intractables

By @paul4innovating May 24, 2016Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, Building Innovation Capability, Fresh thinking, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Polymers

A Question:
If you could ask those that lead innovation, your senior organizational leadership, a series of questions that might help unlock innovation blockages, now would that be valuable?

Getting to a root cause of innovation blockage
So what does block innovation? Arguably there are plenty of things up and down organizations: a lack of resources, an overcrowded portfolio of ideas, a lack of dedicated people, treating innovation as a one-off, keeping it isolated and apart from mainstream activities.

The list could go on and on, no question but to seek out a meaningful exchange of minds let me offer these outlined below as ones to tackle. Get a discussion going on all of these needs ‘being selective’, raised at separate times and then integrated into a collective ‘declaration of innovation intent’ going forward.

Let’s take a different perspective.

If you could ask a series of questions that might help unlock innovation blockages it would make such a difference to our innovation performance and engagement. I think this might need a good external facilitator as my recommendation, one who has deep innovation knowledge and expertise, able to manage the ‘dynamics’ within the room.

Developing a new framework for risk and innovation.

By @paul4innovating May 19, 2016Achieving innovation engagement, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, Foster Performance, gaining innovation momentum, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Polymers5 Comments

I believe we need a new way to manage risk within our innovation activities. It needs to be treated differently from the general ‘risk management’ criteria applied within our business organizations.

In a three-part series, part one outlined the implicit need to align innovation to the corporate strategy, and through this we can determine ‘acceptable risk’.

In part two I offered numerous reasons why we should recognize and treat innovation risk differently to allow it to perform closer to its promise of driving growth and achieving real advantage.

This post here is the third and last part, part three, where I lay out different mechanisms and framing of risk and innovation. These need to be evolved to fit your own risk appetite, not one size fits all. I hope it helps.

Risks are certainly shifting. In a recent piece of work by Deliottes called “Risk sensing:the (evolving) state of the art, the risks of most concern are changing each year. Interestingly, the pace of innovation stands among the top three risks in 2015 and tops along with regulatory risk, the list was foreseen in 2018. With technology disruption, business model disruption and growing competition, social and customer engagement challenge the ability to manage innovation is growing as a concern and in risk management.

We need to formulate a more robust risk innovation framework.

Risk management for innovation needs to evolve to keep pace with the changing demands and pace of change we are undergoing in business challenges. Risk is becoming an evolving capability.

Treating Innovation Risk Differently, Dealing with Uncertainty

By @paul4innovating May 18, 2016Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, Foster Performance, innovation execution delivery, Polymers, Shifting dynamics in innovation3 Comments

We need to open up our thinking about risk and innovation management.

We should aim for a really healthy construct that does help all involved or associated with innovation and managing risk, that gives a better chance of pushing beyond the incremental innovation that avoids most risk and disappoints those seeking real growth.

In this post two, within a three-part series, I build the argument on why we need to treat innovation differently within any risk assessment. Part one focused on linking risk into an innovation strategy that needed to align with the corporate one.

Each organization finds its own level of risk appetite. Regretfully innovation, often by default, gets swept up in this generalization of “risk management” that is corporately driven and the serious message of “risk” dampens exploration. There is a real need to make a clear argument that innovation should be treated differently. It can still come under the broad risk umbrella but judging innovation risk is utterly different from organizational strategic risk.

The Pressing Need to Link Risk into an Innovation Strategy- part one

By @paul4innovating May 17, 2016Achieving innovation engagement, amplifying the innovation signal, innovation execution delivery, Innovation strategy, Polymers, Shifting dynamics in innovation3 Comments

I want to bring together some thoughts on risk and innovation. This is the opening part and sets the scene.

I feel we spend less time on managing risk within our innovation initiatives.

We so often simply measure risk on established risk/return lines of known existing business criteria, treating it as part of our existing ongoing business, and that is plainly wrong.

Risk assessment within our innovation activities needs a different, far more distinct framing that reflects the nature of the unknowns we are working with, in my opinion.

Our organizations need to relate to the differences far more, to allow this ‘innovation risk assessment’ to play an increasing role in ‘advancing’ innovation and its understanding at the boardroom level to relate to and take a different risk-related profile position that many take today.

Rethinking the measuring of innovation

By @paul4innovating May 5, 2016Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Foster Performance, innovation execution delivery, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Polymers7 Comments

I’m a little tired of the lack of original thinking that goes into measuring innovation. Most trot out the same old chestnuts, including ‘return on investment’ as always, as near or at the top.

Leaders want to hear this, the sad truth is getting a ‘decent ROI’ for innovation constructed (note constructed) is really hard. If the innovation is new to the world, how can it have a clear financial return on investment until much later, much becomes an ‘educated’ guess?

We need to appreciate new innovation balance sheet thinking

Why a balance sheet thinking? There are hard and soft measures to measuring or judging our innovation. It goes way outside financial numbers. Would we have seen the emergence of Facebook, Apple Watches, Uber etc etc if those that were determining success from their investments had actually insisted on guaranteeing the ROI before launch or within short time frames, that many of our established organizations insist upon? No it was the belief and ‘seeing’ the potential that encouraged those investing to make the initial investment and then continue on ‘future’ returns.

Establishing a new mentality for innovation

By @paul4innovating April 28, 2016Achieving innovation engagement, Building Innovation Capability, Fresh thinking, Improve Collaboration & Communication, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Molecules, Shifting dynamics in innovation11 Comments

Visual two heads….different mindsets, different thinking about innovation but working together, a duality of thinking and managing innovation going forward. We must learn to explore and exploit at the same time, both in parallel and where needed, in separate ways, or entities.

If we ‘subject’ all of our innovation thinking to go through the same process we lose so much. How can you treat incremental innovation in the same way as radical or breakthrough innovation? You need to apply a completely different thinking and approach to the type of innovation you are thinking through. You must be prepared to abandon established thinking if it is not resolving the problems you are facing.

Beginning any journey is never easy, you stumble a little until you find a certain rhythm

Shining a powerful innovation light into the Corporate Boardrooms

By @paul4innovating April 19, 2016Achieving innovation engagement, Advancing innovation, amplifying the innovation signal, Building Innovation Capability, Improve Collaboration & Communication, innovation execution delivery, Integrated Innovation Thinking, Shifting dynamics in innovation, Tackling innovation, Uncategorized2 Comments

So after a fairly ‘dark’ period for me, of absorbing and reflecting on a series of reports, each indicating that innovation and its management understanding is not as deeply understood in the boardroom as it should be, you need to respond.

This seems an appropriate time to begin to rethink and explain innovation, partly in this need to fight these “immune systems” in fresh ways and partly to redrawn, re-frame and renew the value of innovation; in how it can help organizations going forward in very volatile times.

So let’s shine some light on new ways or even recognized paths for innovation to re-enter the thinking within our corporate boardrooms, in different ways that might resonate more in these more ‘dynamic’ times.

I like this organizing framework shown above, it can allow us to gain a revised understanding of how innovation can be mobilized in different ways, to give value in dealing with these different forces to help move you towards a growing level of renewal.

So I want to begin a series of posts around positioning innovation frameworks, tools or approaches that build the boardroom “innovation toolkit” to deal in both the predictive and unpredictive environments. The suggestions that will be offered are designed to help tackle the disruptive forces swirling around the business that are rising, increasing the uncertainties to future invest. It is attempting to address the concerns on how to organize the “forces of innovation” to combat them, to raise the confidence level in the boardroom to ’embrace’ innovation far more than seemingly the case today.